So many similarities, so many differences: nine months after he last pulled on his race gear, clattered down a team bus stairs and headed for a sign-on. Tao Geoghegan Hart was finally back in business at a bike race, now at stage 1 of the 2024 Volta ao Algarve.
The journey back from the point where Geoghegan Hart lay on the ground mid-way through stage 11 of the 2023 Giro d’Italia nursing a fractured femur to a point when he could race again has been a long one, involving months of rehabilitation. But this February 13 in Portugal’s premier week-long race, he was finally there.
Some of the automatisms had slipped a little, the 2020 Giro d’Italia winner told reporters at the start, like the time he needed to pin a number on his back, now wearing the kit of his new team, Lidl-Trek, for the first time at a race, too.
It also happened that Ineos Grenadiers, Geoghegan Hart’s previous team, immediately preceded Lidl-Trek on Algarve’s cramped sign-on podium. When the Briton crossed paths with his former teammates, they exchanged hugs and grins, clearly pleased to see him again.
Then there were signatures and smiles for the fans, a brief interview with the media, and after the riders assembled on Portimão’s cobbled seafront for the start, a whistle blown for the off. Business as usual, then, for Geoghegan Hart, for all the long build-up has been so different for him.
“It’s just like starting any season, really. It’s been a good winter and in the end it’s always strange to jump on the bus for the first time and all those things. I had to look a bit longer for the scissors and pins for the numbers but otherwise it’s pretty normal,” Geoghegan Hart told reporters.
“I’ve got really good feelings, it’s been super-nice last few weeks with Jasper [Stuyven] together. We trained really well, no problems, so now another story and I’m looking forward to it today in windy Portugal.”
His goals were equally familiar and unusual: “to get back in the race, [find the] race feeling, race rhythm. It’s been, I don’t know, eight months or so without that and it’s always different from training. So I just enjoy it and make the most of that.”
Some five hours later, after a not exceptionally arduous but very long stage, Geoghegan Hart rolled across the line in one of the small knots of riders that formed following a series of crashes in the final kilometres. With all of them happening inside in the last three kilometres, there was no particular sense of pressure despite the splits, though, and the Briton was in an upbeat mood when he later discussed his first day back 'at the office', finishing safely in the peloton in 83rd position.
"It felt really nice to be back, even with lots of wind and some rain!” Geoghegan Hart said in a statement released by his team.
“It’s perhaps not what people want to hear, but the feeling was no different than the start of any of my seasons as a pro, getting back in the routine, seeing familiar faces after the winter and finding the rhythm. I felt good in the group and we rode well as a team to try to stay out of trouble as much as possible,” he added.
With stage 1 out of the way, Geoghegan Hart’s next goals will likely be to see how he can far on the two uphill finishes, and even before the stage he recognised that on the Malhao, the non-TT specialists would be all but obliged to make the sparks fly.
“I’ve raced it two times before, it all depends on the wind and the approach the riders take. But with such a long TT, I think some climbers looking to make it solid from the start," he said.
Whether the Briton will be participating in the attacks on the Malhao remains to be seen, and Sunday is still another three stages away. But one way or another, his first day back after his long hiatus in racing got off to an ideal start, and that augers well.
